ATLANTA — Special Counsel Jack Smith got a search warrant to go through former U.S. President Donald Trump's Twitter account, now known as "X," according to a newly unsealed court filing on Wednesday.
Trump faces three separate indictments and a possible fourth one in Georgia. Smith got a search warrant in Washington, D.C. District Court for data and records in the former president's account.
“It's the private information in the account that's actually not for public consumption. That would be important, and so direct messages I think are probably first and foremost what they're looking at," 11Alive Political Analyst Andra Gillespie said.
Gillespie believes Smith is looking for certain things in Trump's direct messages.
“I would assume that the things that they're looking for are evidence that Trump was in direct communication with his coconspirators, planning and plotting a conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 elections," Gillespie said.
Trump claimed he didn't know about the search warrant, and Gillespie said that's for a specific reason.
“The legal argument and justification for issuing this warrant secretly and requiring Twitter to not tell Donald Trump what was going on was fear that he would actually try to destroy evidence, that he would try to delete messages in the hopes that nobody would be able to find it," Gillespie said.
Gillespie believes the search warrant on Trump’s X account will be used to push for support in his base as he runs for the 2024 Republican nomination for president.
“I expect that Donald Trump and his defense team are going to weaponize this as they have weaponized all of the indictments against him, and they're going to use this to try to make the case to their supporters that this is further evidence of the fact that the government is out to get Donald Trump," Gillespie said.
A federal judge fined Elon Musk and "X" $350,000 for the initial resistance and delay to comply with the January warrant for Trump's account.